1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus, such as a pushbutton telephone or other receiving and sending equipment, for use in accessing telephone or cellular company originating central office equipment so as to allow a calling party to control the disclosure of its directory telephone number and/or name (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “directory telephone number with a corresponding name” or “DN”) to a called party who subscribes to any of the Custom Local Area Signaling System (CLASS) services such as Caller ID, Automatic Recall, Who Called Me, Automatic Callback and Screening List, to name a few. The apparatus is also for use in receiving a directory telephone number and/or name of a calling third party from telephone or cellular company terminating central office equipment, displaying the received directory telephone number and/or name in a display counter, and storing the received directory telephone number and/or name in memory for later recall by the called party. In addition, the apparatus is for use in permitting the automatic or manual dialing of the stored directory telephone number to return a call. This invention also relates to a method for sending a directory telephone number and/or name of a calling party to a called station during a silent interval between ringing signals or following a call waiting tone signal after receiving at terminating central office equipment serving the called station the calling party's directory telephone number flagged as public from originating central office equipment serving the calling party, indicating that the received directory telephone number or, if applicable, directory telephone number and name of the calling party is to be disclosed at the called station.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Several Regional Bell Operating Companies are offering or planning to offer their customers Caller ID on a subscription basis. This new service discloses the calling party directory telephone number to the called party during the first long interval between ringing signals from a telephone switching office. Due to privacy considerations, most state public utility commissions are requiring their local telephone companies to offer Caller ID along with a blocking service, and for free, so as to allow the calling party to decide on a per call basis whether to disclose or block its directory telephone number to the called party. One blocking service being offered or considered by the Regional Bell Operating Companies require the calling party to dial an access code prior to and as part of the calling sequence in order to override the calling party permanent “public” status of its directory telephone number and temporarily flag the directory telephone number as “private” to indicate to the terminating central office equipment that the directory telephone number is not to be disclosed to the called party. If the access code is dialed as part of the calling sequence, the directory telephone number will be disclosed to the called party. In either case, the originating central office equipment transmits the flagged “public” or “private” directory telephone number to the terminating central office equipment to which the called party telephone line is connected during call setup. If the directory telephone number is flagged “private”, the terminating central office equipment connects to the called party telephone line with ringing only. However, if the directory telephone number is flagged “public”, the terminating central office equipment connects to the called party telephone line with ringing and the transmission of the calling party's directory telephone number.
The invention disclosed in the Carolyn A. Doughty U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,956, issued Apr. 15, 1986, discloses a method and an apparatus for displaying at a selected station special service information during a silent interval between ringing signals from a telephone switching office. Each received character of the special service information is “temporarily stored” in a data memory of a data receiver by a program-controlled microprocessor and then exhibited in a display unit under the control of the microprocessor. The display is thus initiated during the silent interval and remains until cleared, automatically, when the called party answers the incoming call or when the calling party hangs up. Thus, in either situation, the special service information is retained in memory at the terminating central office switch and not in a memory at the called party apparatus.